Chapter 3: The research
3.2 The basis for the study and the research population
3.2.5 The research population
The research population is comprised of women in two categories:
1. Participants in empowerment courses: The population that is supposed to undergo change.
2. Those running the empowerment courses: The population that is supposed to create the platform for change amongst the participants.
The two groups share an overt common denominator as women according to their biological and social definitions
3.2.5.1 Participants in the course
The participants are the population meant to experience a process of change (see table) and comprise upper middle class Israeli women aged 30-65, living mainly in the locale where the research was conducted, whose participation is voluntary and whose degree of awareness of the need for change and the type of change is not clear enough.
The data and mapping of the research population are as follows:
Period 2000-2003
Period of unawareness
2004-2007
Period of awareness
Total
Type
Direct
empowerment
38 women = 3 courses
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120 women = 9 courses
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158 women Community
target
141 women= 6 courses160 141 women
Indirect empowerment skills
287 women = 123 courses161
287 women
Total 586 women
The research population participated in three types of courses, as defined by the writer:
158 Business leadership – 22; Leaders and empowerment - 16
159 Leadership and empowerment – stage 1
160 Leadership and empowerment, stage 2: 59 women
161 Computers – 6 groups, 81 women; driving refresher course – 4 groups, 97 women; presentation and image – 2 groups, 41 women.
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1. Courses on direct empowerment – in which the word 'leadership' or 'empowerment' appears (stage a). Their purpose was to empower the participants and train them to create and run community projects for women (some of the courses were in the Project 100 framework) . 2. Target-focused community courses (stage 2) - were a continuation of
the direct empowerment courses intended to help implement community projects that were not defined at that time
3. Indirect empowerment courses – that focused on developing or establishing tools and personal skills. Some of these courses were proposed and conducted by participants in the direct empowerment courses as a community project, such as that on personal image and presentation, women and money (that failed). Two courses were developed after identifying the needs and barriers of women such as a returning to drive course for those with a driving license who had not driven for some time, and a computer course to eradicate digital illiteracy.
The two chronological periods that appear in the table indicate professional change on two axes – the personal axis (of the researcher as an advisor and as a woman) and the systemic axis (of the advisors as a group and of the Authority as an institutional actor) that, the researcher believes, affords a component no less important in the empowerment process studied.
There was a lack of knowledge and of focus in 2002-2003 that was manifested in the absence of resources, infrastructures and cooperation.
This period saw cohesion and the establishment of the advisor's role at the level of a presence in the field, amongst other things as the result of the first advisors' course attended by this researcher.
Project 100 was implemented between 2004-2007 and was a catalyst for the development of the researcher's professional insights. This understanding helped her to push steps for change at the national level, to be detailed below. In another professional course for advisors, in which she participated in 2006, issues were honed and a core of four advisors developed (including this writer) who were involved in, and led, the processes of change together with the Authority and IULA.
It is worth noting, for the sake of exactitude of this study, that in parallel with the activity described, other and similar courses were held for women with other shared critical attributes such as young girls, Ethiopian girls, new immigrants from the FSU, hearing impaired women and so on.
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These courses are not described in the above table due to their uniqueness that is likely to affect the findings.
3.2.5.2 Course operators
This population served as the means applying tools and tactics for realizing the change and help motivate the process of change. This group is composed of three sub-groups, each of which has a different weight regarding the level of influence or change:
1. Advisors on the status of women 2. Course instructors
3. People holding additional positions 3.2.5.2.1 Advisors on the status of women
The empowerment courses in the framework of Project 100 were held mainly in the municipal area, thus one of the main factors in the process are the advisors. As one of them, the researcher assumes that the above three population groups also experienced the main aspects of change following the courses.
The advisors' profile that this writer will sketch concisely and in generalized fashion presents an extremely broad and varied range of basic, non-uniform data in four areas:
1. Formal education – from high school to the PhD degree. Some have professional education in areas such as social work, education, social sciences and the humanities. No advisor has specific education in women's studies and few have in public administration.
2. Professional training – in areas relevant to their previous positions, prior to taking on the advisory position. Specific training as new advisors was offered in three courses that have been held till now in which 60 advisors participated.162
3. Status - varies between employee status of salaried municipality employees, as stated in the Law, and volunteers and public electees163 which runs counter to the law, and positioning status, derived from both the way of employment and from the degree of
162 From a total of 208 advisors working in Israel when this study was conducted. In some municipalities the advisor was replaced and so a new advisor was also trained in the same municipality, leaving the number of locations where the advisor had no training larger. Apart from the course, several in-service training courses are held annually focusing on a particular subject. The training courses are not held on a permanent basis (Ben Asher, 2007b).
163 Volunteers – the degree of commitment and responsibility. Public appointees – political interests. In both statuses there is a high degree of temporariness that is likely to affect the conduct and lack of professional tools that are needed.
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closeness to the Mayor. In some cases the professional aspect of her previous position before being advisor is also manifested, or a combination of both.
4. Skills for the position – in the absence of a clear definition of the role the necessary personal skills were not determined explicitly until the law was changed in 2008.
3.2.5.2.2 Course instructors
An additional component that should be explored is the instructors who participated in the project. Known as guides, instructors or lecturers the term is not specific and in daily use the terms are interchangeable and perceived as identical although this is not the case. In this study, the researcher chooses to use the term instructors.
Two main components are typical of this instruction to which this research is referring:
1. The subject – female empowerment 2. The target audience – women
The (informal) pool of potential instructors developed in two stages:
1. A few instructors who coordinated most of the courses. Their unique knowledge led them to exclusive, superior and patronizing behavior towards the potential target audience. Most of them grew from the feminist experience of the 1970s-1990s, mainly in voluntary organizations or the academe. Their professional and personal growth and behavior flowered in the patriarchal world with its absolute internalization
2. 'Discovering' the field – many instructors strive to enter it and the topic of female guidance has become trendy.
In the absence of a guiding professional hand many instructors strive to convey courses to women. A few male instructors also try to enter the domain but are blocked. This wave of instructors developed from the field and from working with mixed groups. Most of them come from the world of organizational consultancy, which is a mainly masculine world of content, or employ their own personal experiences that are used as justification for their instructional skills. The reality in which everyone can participate in a course and see themselves as experts makes the phenomenon common.
One of the common approaches that became rooted regarding the realm of female instruction assumes that women understand women and it is
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therefore natural for the instruction in the courses for women to be given by women. As one of the instructors said, "I only employ women because no man can talk about the status of women.."
Another instructor with whom the researcher spoke explained this in the fact that the moment a man instructs a group of women, they immediately begin to deliberate before him. It is true that the instructors' role affords a focus of power due to the role and the knowledge. According to her, the situation created when a male instructor enters actually reflects the daily reality of women and as a transformative experience a different situation must be generated.
There was no list of potential instructors at the beginning of Project 100 and the choice of whom to select was in the hands of the advisors. In this study the researcher will focus only on female instructors who taught the empowerment courses in the town in which this study is conducted. The main thrust will be regarding eight instructors with whom she is familiar in her ongoing work. The researcher will employ materials that relate to other instructors, or to the same instructors who led similar courses in other towns in order to reinforce certain aspects.
3.2.5.2.3 Other role holders
The role holders can be divided into three groups:
1. Project initiator: Y.P. presented herself as introducing the idea (Heruti-Sover, 2007:82). She was the Authority director in 2004, the year Project 100 began. Y.P. represented the factor determining policy during the Project, mainly from the organizational aspect (budgeting, scope and method of implementation at the technical level).
2. Professional accompaniment: S participated in the first stages of the planning164, and provided professional advice to the initiating factor prior to and at the start of Project 100. As a project advisor, she led the only session that took place with the advisors in June 2004, at which Project 100 was presented.
S, who runs an independent advisory institute for advice and guidance, worked with the Authority for the four years after the advisors were appointed and even taught the first course for advisors in 2002. She was originally a member of a feminist women's organization and was amongst the first instructors who dealt with guiding groups of women, in empowering women and in training
164 When talking to her about her part in the process she replied that she cannot talk about the subject due to client confidentiality.
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appointees. She was considered a charismatic instructor, with knowledge and experience in the domain, as having connections in the new field and therefore as authoritative. Other instructional meetings or meetings to discuss the problems were not held during the project.
3. Organizational accompaniment: Several Authority employees on the status of women, whose main role was to afford a mediating, bridging factor solving mainly technical problems.